


I'll Be There

by nanaprincess91



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Dipcifica implied, Dipcifica mention, Dipper - Freeform, Family, Family Feels, Feels, Fluff, Gen, Pines Family, Post-Weirdmageddon, Sibling Bonding, Siblings, Waddles - Freeform, kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-17
Updated: 2018-11-17
Packaged: 2019-08-24 17:07:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16644287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nanaprincess91/pseuds/nanaprincess91
Summary: The Pines twins are back home with their parents, but Mabel is still stuck on the events of Weirdmaggedon and battling a sense of guilt she's not used to. Luckily, she doesn't have to handle it alone.





	I'll Be There

**Author's Note:**

> Hello everyone! This is my first real fanfiction on AO3. I wanted to explore how the effects of Weirdmaggedon could've affected Mabel since I think the side-effects of trauma like that could take some time to manifest.  
> Plus, I just really wanted to write some sincere sibling interaction between the Pines twins again.  
> Enjoy!

They hadn’t planned on hiding the truth from their parents. Not that they had been planning to tell them that they had fought an interdimensional demon determined to turn their world into a paralyzing prison of never ending random horror, but telling them about their two incredible great-uncles, that had been a given share.

“We missed you two so much,” their mother gave the twins another squeeze, the clips in her short brown hair digging into Mabel's head as they hugged. Not that Mabel minded. She had missed those hugs. 

She placed a kiss on each of their heads before taking a step back, scrunching her nose.

“Dipper, we really need to get you some good deodorant. Did you even shower in Oregon?”

Dipper turned crimson and stammered out a “Mom!” 

Mabel snickered under her breath, nudging her brother. “Told ya you smelled.”

“We may need to have a talk with your Great Uncle Stanford about proper teenage hygiene before we let you go back,” Samuel, their father, said with a laugh. 

Mabel knew deep down it was a joke, not something said seriously, but her mind raced to a few days before, after their inter-dimensional travels, to what she had told their uncles.

_ “Maybe the reason you two can’t take care of kids is that you kinda still  _ are  _ kids.”  _

What if their parents found out about Grunkle Stan’s recklessness or Grunkle Ford's search for adventure? Even if what Grunkle Stan had done was to save their Grunkle Ford, would their parents ever allow their two children back to visit? Mabel had never hidden anything from her family (okay maybe a family of rollypollies and ladybugs for a week, but other than that, nothing), but suddenly, the act of telling their parents about a decades-long family secret seemed like a new pack of glitter. If she opened it, could she be sure it wouldn’t blow up in her face? And glitter got on everything. Sure, it made everything  _ fabulous  _ but her parents weren’t always the biggest fans. What if it got stuck to them and-

_ Getting carried away, Mabel. Concentrate.  _

Her father started undoing his bowvtie, glancing sideways with a smile at his children. “So what kind of trouble did you two get into, other than bringing a pig home?”

“NONE!” Mabel yelled back.

“TROUBLE? WHAT TROUBLE?!”

Mabel turned her head to the side to find Dipper staring right back, his mouth still open from his equally sudden and loud response. It seemed like he’d had the same thought. Who needed twin powers? They were on the same wavelength. 

Their mother and father exchanged a look, the bow tie forgotten, half undone. 

“Mason, Mabel,” their mother said, narrowing her eyes. 

Mabel swallowed. She wasn’t good at lying. Not fully. It was like acting, but not fun acting: it was  _ bad _ acting. She glanced at Dipper who was shuffling his feet and mouthing things to himself.  He looked up at Mabel and nodded. She smiled back. They were a team.

“Ah, yeah, no trouble.” Dipper said haltingly. “Yeah, no, but uh- we….we…”

“Learned to drive!” Mabel finished.

“Learned to...drive?” Their father said skeptically.

“Y-yeah. Yeah!” Dipper said, face brightening. “Grunkle Stan had a golf cart and we kind of drove it around the road by the woods. We didn’t want you to be mad.”

Their father laughed, finishing working on his bowtie. “Is that all? I learned to drive a car when I was 14. Twelve's a bit of an early start, but what can you expect from a man living in the woods.”

Mabel and Dipper laughed along, hiding their nervousness. That had been a close call.

“Why don’t we get some gyros and you can tell us about your summer?”

* * *

 

“I don’t like this, Waddles.” Mabel threw herself back on her bed, staring at her ceiling. The faces of Sev’ral Timez, stared back at her. Maybe she should take those down. “What if mom and dad find out?”

Waddles oinked quietly, wiggling on his back.

“I know, you’re right. It’s for the best.” 

_ “You’re a good person, Mabel.” _

Grunkle Ford’s words from the summer rang through her head.

But she wasn’t! She was always getting distracted and focusing on boys and she had nearly ended their world by wanting one more day of summer, another chance to stay with Dipper and to grow up together. And now, she was going to add lying to her list of crimes?

Mabel flailed in bed.

Waddles let out a startled yelp, jumping off her bed.

“Waddles! I’m so sorry!” She jumped off the bed and gave him a hug. The pig oinked sleepily and Mabel buried her face in his little body.

She had been so selfish…

She hadn’t meant to put her family in danger. She hadn’t.

“Hey Dipper?” She called out, raising her head.

No response.

There was no extra bed in the corner.

_ Right, I’m back home. _

Mabel’s room with bright pastels and unicorns and cats dressed as cupcakes (One of the best posters in all of history in her opinion) suddenly felt too...empty. Or too bright? She wasn’t sure. Mabel carried Waddles over to her bed and covered him with a blanket, watching her friend fall asleep before she crept out of her room. It was just down the hall, not even a long walk, but it felt like miles.

His door was open but just barely, the wood covered in stickers of aliens and ghosts and weird dice and dragons. She popped her head in slightly. 

“Dipper,” she whispered. “Hey Dipper, are you awake?”

“Mabel,” a groggy voice called back.

She pushed the door open and found Dipper sitting up in bed, hair sticking up messily as he rubbed one eye open.

“What are you doing here?” he yawned.

“Is it right?”

“What?”

“Lying to mom and dad?”

Dipper frowned. “What? Yeah, of course. We want to go visit Grunkle Stan and Ford and Wendy and Soos and everyone next summer, right? We’re just lucky mom and dad thought your letters were a prank.” 

“But we’re lying.”

“Mabel,” Dipper said with exasperation. “You lie all the time.”

“No, I don’t!”

“What about the time you hid Sev’ral Timez in your room?”

“I was protecting them from their manager! He was using them for music. They hadn’t seen trees, Dipper! Trees! I was just letting them live a little.”

Dipper gave her a flat look. “And the time we cheated at mini-golf.”

“We were teaching a lesson, Dipper. Also, those little golf people tried to golf us to death!”

“No pretty sure they just tried to regular kill us to death.”

“But I haven’t LIED lied, Dipper. Those were little lies. This is a big lie.” She flailed her arms. “Doesn’t this make me bad?”

Dipper laughed. “Mabel, you couldn’t be bad if you tried, okay? Relax.”

“I just don’t want this all to blow up in our face and it to get stupid.”

“It won’t get stupid,” Dipper said teasing.

It was almost like before, nearly the same conversation.

_ “Can you promise me you won’t get stupid?” _

_ “Not stupider than you, dumb dumb.” _

“Mabel?”

“What?” Mabel looked up.

“You sure you’re okay? You should sleep.” Dipper yawned.

It had been an exhausting day for both of them. He was right; they should sleep. They were back home, safe, and happy, after a wonderful summer.

She looked down and nodded “Yeah. I’m fine” She walked out the door.

“Goodnight, stupid.”

She smiled. “Good night, stupid.”

That was good enough, right?

_ “UNPUUUURE.” _

_ Shut up, Celestabellebethabelle.  _

But what if the phony unicorn had been right? All the things that had happened- Weirdmaggedon, all of that-

She didn’t realize she had turned back until her hand pushed the door open again.

“Am I a bad person?”

Dipper jumped up in bed. “Mabel! Weren’t you going back to-”

“Am I a bad person? Be honest.” Mabel asked, her voice warbly.

The emotion in her voice must've surprised Dipper because there brother's eyes widened in shock. “What? Why would you ask that?-”

And suddenly, she found it all spilling out.

“I gave Bill the rift and if that hadn’t happened, you wouldn’t have been out there in the streets during the whole apocalypse thing and I know it was scary and now we’re lying to mom and dad and we shouldn’t because they’re mom and dad, you know? And that’s not good and I wasn’t good before-I was so stupid and I just wanted more time and I know you said that it was okay and you came back with me instead of staying in Gravity Falls with Grunkle Ford, but I took away your chance to study all that weird stuff and to date Pacifica and to have a friend who plays dragons, dungeons, and dice and to have someone who gets all your obsessive stuff and I’m sorry- Do you hate me?”

Mabel didn’t realize her eyes had been burning with tears and her throat closing up until she was breathing heavily for air at the end of her rant. Her words filling the empty silence. Dipper looked wide-awake now, staring at his sister as if she were a stranger.

_ Mabel, what have you done?  _

She took a step back. “I-”

“I could never hate you, Mabel.” Dipper said quietly. His eyes turned to ones of concern as he stood up. “Why would you think that?”

She could lie. She could pull a Stan whenever he showed vulnerability and try to hide it behind a joke. But she didn’t want to. She was tired of feeling so alone and so...so unlike herself. This was her brother. If she couldn’t be honest with him, who could she be honest with?

Mabel buried her face half in her pajama shirt. “I took away your big chance. I started the end of the world.”

Dipper shook his head. “Bill” he shuddered, “was going to find his way in one way or another. That wasn’t your fault.”

Mabel shook her head, diving deeper into her shirt’s warmth.

“I mean it was a mistake, but heck, how many mistakes did I make this summer, Mabel?”

“You didn’t hurt people.”

“I hurt you sometimes,” Dipper confessed. “And Stan and Soos and Wendy. I said some pretty terrible things sometimes.”

“But-”

“Mabel, it was a mistake. No one hates you for that.” He paused. “Have you...been feeling like this ever since Weirdmaggedon?”

Mabel finally disappeared within her pajama. She sat on the floor of the ground. “Mabel’s in sweatertown right now.”

“You’re not wearing a sweater.” Dipper’s voice was barely muffled. 

“Sweatertown is going through reconstruction. Pajamaville is a temporary shelter.”

“Mabel.”

She closed her eyes. Maybe it would all go away. She would be back in a cabin, before the end of the world, before she had lied and hurt others and-

“Mabel, please.”

The concern in Dipper’s voice caused her to emerge slightly. He was kneeling in front of her, a look of pain and confusion on his face. 

“Yeah,” Mabel affirmed. “I guess.”

Dipper nodded, a more serious look on his face taking place of his concerned face. “You were scared.”

Mabel hesitated and then nodded. She had been scared of losing time with her family, a bond with Dipper, to end up like Stan and Ford. They had made up now or were on their way to making amends, but before Weirdmaggedon, it had seemed an impossible dream for that to ever happen.

“I was scared too,” Dipper said.

“I’m sorry.”

“Are you still scared?”

Mabel paused. Was she?

_ Grunkle Stan’s blank face looking at her without recognition. The adorable cat judge molting into a swarm of writhing bugs, the sky on fire. Bill’s eye flashing between her and Dipper- _

_ “I think I’m gonna kill one of them! Eeny, meeny-” _

“A little,” Mabel whispered.

“Me too.” He handed her a folded piece of paper.

Mabel stuck her hands slightly out of her shirt to unfold it. Their friends’ signatures and well wishes met her eyes, framing a big “See you next summer.” Her hands gripped the paper like a lifeline.

“I know it’s scary right now. And I know you want to tell mom and dad….Maybe we can in the future.” Dipper settled down beside her. “But I don’t want them to be scared for us. Remember that time we fell off our bikes and mom and dad put up an ad on the internet selling “cursed bikes”?” 

Mabel snorted.

Dipper smiled. “If Stan and Ford back us up later on, then maybe mom and dad’ll understand and they’ll let us go back. Do you think you can talk about everything normally with them?”

No, if she was honest, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to. It was different with Dipper and Grunkle Stan and Grunkle Ford and Soos and Grenda and Candy and everyone because they had seen it; they could joke around about it. They had seen the fun things too. But if she tried telling her parents, they would focus on the bad and on the scary and she wasn’t sure she was ready to just think about all those things and only those things. Not yet.

“I don't like feeling this way, Dipper.” Mabel said softly. “I feel so icky and sad and not me-like. I feel like those angsty romance stories without the love and where everyone cries.”

Dipper chuckled. 

Mabel frowned at him. “I'm serious. Why do I feel like this?”

“I think it's normal.” He reached for the paper in Mabel's hands and smiled at it too, seemingly lost in thought. “You're not being weird.”

“Promise?”

“Yeah,” Dipper smiled again. “Besides, you won't be alone. We're the Mystery Twins. We'll get through it together.” 

Mabel adjusted her shirt, and outstretched her arms. “Sincere sibling hug?”

Dipper laughed and hugged her tightly. “Sincere sibling hug.”

Mabel stood up. “I'm gonna go to bed, okay? Thanks, Dipper.” 

“Okay. Night.”

It was going to be okay. Dipper had returned home. She wasn't alone. These things would pass with time and support. Mabel yawned. If her family said she was good, she'd believe them-

“Mabel?”

Mabel turned around, stopping halfway out the frame.

Dipper was doing his nervous fidgets with a pen.

“I uh….the room feels really empty and I've kind of been having some bad dreams.”

Mabel grinned. “Sleepovers are the best cure for head scaries. Come on, bro bro.” She waved him over and he jumped out of bed.

It was nearly 3AM after they finished rummaging in the closet for a sleeping bag and setting it up on Mabel's extra mattress for sleepovers. Waddles was curled up to Mabel's side and the nightlight Mabel hadn't used since she was 8 was plugged into the wall, creating a happy star on the wall.

“Mabel,” Dipper said groggily, “what was that you said about Pacifica?”

Mabel giggled softly and buried herself in her blankets. “Don't deny the chemistry, Dipper. I'm gonna have a sister in law. Good night.”

Dipper may have responded, but Mabel was too far gone. She fell asleep to the memory of a little shack in the woods filled with laughter. 

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed it! Let me know what you think. I'm hoping to write more Gravity Falls oneshots in the future.


End file.
